


Marble Lover of Liberty

by AMarguerite, Hammie



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hammie/pseuds/Hammie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine accosts Enjolras. Things don't exactly go like she planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marble Lover of Liberty

Enjolras's classes had ended for the day, and, having stopped by the printshop to pick up a batch of Prouvaire's latest pamphlet, he opened one of his law texts to tuck them into it. Engaged as he was in this task, he was not, perhaps, paying as much attention to his surroundings as he ought to have been. If he had, he might have spotted the gaunt gamine lurking in the shadows before she lunged out towards him, halting his progress immediately with the surprising firmness of her grip on his arm. Her knuckles were white; she was holding hard enough to tear the cloth of his coat.

"Pardon me, monsieur," the girl rasped, gazing up into his face with undisguised hope. "Pardon me, I'm so sorry, I know I oughtn't bother you this way, you oughtn't be seen with a girl like me, I know, but please, I must know, please," she took a rattling breath and favored Enjolras with a gap-toothed smile. "Please, won't you tell me, where is Monsieur Marius? Oh, I've been looking for him, I have, it's very important!"

"Marius?" Enjolras repeated, taking a small step back and observing the girl with a frown. "I haven't the foggiest idea."

"Oh, but you do know where he is, don't you?" she coaxed, pitching her rough voice down into a poor imitation of softness. "You must! I seen him with you, I know I have, I've seen you - you MUST know!" Her hold on his arm tightened.

Enjolras attempted, gently, to extricate himself from her grip. Noticing how tightly she'd been holding the coat sleeve, she let go, but did not let him step back, laboriously smoothing out the wrinkles she'd made. "I do not know where he is," he repeated patiently. "Marius stopped attending our meetings months ago."

"Oh!" the girl cried, stamping her foot. "You must have some idea, you simply must, I don't know what I'll do..." she trailed off, her gaze sliding into the middle distance. When it alighted once more on Enjolras's face, her expression was different. She lowered her eyelids and murmured, "please, monsieur, you just don't know how grateful I'd be," and reached up to tug her already-slipping chemise further down one bony shoulder. It slipped down past her ribcage almost to her middle, and she looked back up at Enjolras boldly, making it perfectly clear what she was offering in exchange for the information she wanted. 

"Citizeness," Enjolras began somewhat sternly,”I do not know what your impression of me may be, but I have no desire to take any liberties...” Enjolras trailed off. He experienced the curious double vision Prouvaire was always talking about and attributing to Romantic visionaries. Where before there had been a gamine literally rather than figuratively bearing her breast, Enjolras now saw Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people, her bare breast marking her as a symbol, as a personification of democracy, as the beloved Marianne of the Revolution. “Citizeness, I have no desire to take any liberties with your person, but have you any notion of liberty? The liberty of a nation formerly enchained by the Great Chain of Being where man was born into his shackles and then died in them, in the same servitude as his father and all his fathers before him. Ah, but France will always sever her chains, her poorest citizens rise up to break them on the barricades. In 1830, these medieval streets built in times of seignorial oppression, winding and twisted, very far from the straight .path of equality and justice, were torn apart--”

“Oh, Monsieur,” the girl tried to interrupt, jutting out her bony chest. 

But Enjolras was now enraptured in his vision and gestured across the Seine at Notre Dame. “Ah and Liberty, like a modern day Nike, her garments flowing in the zeitgest of freedom, lead the way! The tricolor first rose above Notre Dame, making grown men weep with delight. Liberty-- fraternity-- equality! And so Liberty-- a woman of the people, but still everything that we strive to achieve for our homeland-- bore aloft the tricolor flag, leading the people across the ruins of absolute monarchy. What a glorious stance-- in one hand, the tricolor, in the other, a carbine.” 

This was not at all what the girl had intended. “Monsieur--”

“And everywhere, the tricolor was repeated-- on the clothing of the men, on the uniforms of the fallen-- at at her left, a student, holding aloft his pistols, at last implementing his ideals, in the smoke of war. The Three Glorious days! A France that might have been free!”

"I think I might have seen him by that café," the girl lied desperately, hitching her chemise back up and making a hasty exit. "Revolutionaries!" she muttered to herself. "Useless, the lot of them!"

It was only until several minutes later when Enjolras, who had begun to deconstruct the three central figures as a further reflection of the tri-color, the three estates brought together as one, and the three part goal of liberty, equality and fraternity, noticed that she had gone. "Citizeness?" he inquired, looking about him as though woken from a vivid dream. Shrugging to himself, he finished tucking the last pamphlet into his textbook and went on his way, a small smile on his lips.


End file.
